Blakeman: British Smackdown Is Example of Obama 'Leading From Behind' on Syria

As President Obama’s apparent strategy of a limited military strike on Syria began publicly unraveling on Thursday with Great Britain’s embarrassing anti-war vote, Republican strategist Bradley A. Blakeman tells Newsmax that the president mishandled the crisis from the start.

“I think this is the perfect example of him leading from behind, the fact that he let the British trump him. It should have been a fait acompli,” said Blakeman in an exclusive interview on Thursday. “I don’t know what’s going to happen but it doesn’t bode well for the leadership of the United States that we get slapped down by the British.”

He said the U.S. was unable to effectively work through the United Nations because U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power missed an emergency meeting of the Security Council during a personal trip to Ireland — just days after starting her new job.

“We could have added great pressure on the Security Council to put up or shut up,” said Blakeman, adding that British Prime Minister David Cameron “could have made his case first before the Security Council” before the vote by his country’s Parliament.

“Obama pretty much let Cameron twist in the wind,” observed Blakeman, a Newsmax contributor and a professor of public policy, politics and international affairs at Georgetown University. “Obama didn’t do the proper legwork. We had the U.N. ambassador on vacation. The priorities are screwed up.”

He said that if the U.S. decides to strike Syria without British support, the president would be taking a foreign policy gamble.

“If you go without Britain that’s a huge gamble on Obama’s part because if things go South Obama is in big, big trouble,” he explained, adding that embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad stands to benefit by the delay in military action.

“Things have been moved around because Assad has time to hide things,” said Blakeman. “He bought time. And this U.N. inspection is going to be a joke.”